The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
From time to time, the software running in packet switching devices needs to be upgraded. However, this is problematic as taking the entire packet switch device or portions thereof offline cause packets to be lost during the upgrade process. Such upgrades impact service provider business by reducing the availability of their networks, thereby affecting the Service Level Agreements with their customers.